


Picture Perfect

by qwanderer



Series: Pardicer [11]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Episode: s5e13 The Corkscrew Job, Multi, POV Eliot, get-back-together, yup I fixed it!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9470588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: Eliot knew he was never gonna get back to where he started, way back in the beginning.But he still didn't know how far his journey was takin' him, quite yet.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Stole the bits of The Corkscrew Job I needed to fix what I broke! A medium amount, I'd say.
> 
> Two more episodes to go! I'm excited. Estimating maybe three or four more fics in series, but come on, when am I ever right about those sorts of things.

Eliot had been trying not to shut the other two out so much, even though he still felt like he needed a little space to find himself. 

Maybe one of the most compelling reasons to keep hanging around them was that otherwise they'd pretty much only eat sugar. Pastries, cereal, gummies, chocolate, whatever was around. Seriously, leave Hardison alone with his brewing vats too long and he'd just start eating the malted barley. Least he'd get some fiber that way, too. 

So Eliot came up to headquarters to cook for the team, when he could. Made 'em soup, or stir fry, or whatever he felt up to after his work in the pub. But it was better when it was the whole team, and he didn't have to face the whole mess of emotions that was him an' Parker an' Hardison, without anyone else as a distraction. A buffer. 

So he invited the whole team. 

Today they were talking over the White Rabbit con again. 

"I'm the best at stealing everything," Parker said, "but I've never stolen someone's soul before." 

"Park - Parker - that's not exactly..." Hardison frowned at her. "You can't steal someone's _soul,_ Parker." 

"Actually," Eliot said, "there are a few places scattered around the world where people believe that you can steal or manipulate someone's soul, just by takin' a picture of them." 

"Huh," said Parker. "Wonder how many souls you can fit in one camera. Guess it depends how big they are." 

Nate shook his head. "It's just superstition, Parker. It doesn't actually do anything." 

Sophie raised her eyebrows at him. "Never underestimate the power of superstition," she admonished. 

Even with the other two there, it ached to be so close to Parker and Hardison, missing them, wondering why he was staying away. 

* * *

Eliot already knew things weren't gonna last with Tabatha. 

She was great, but there were only so many dates you could spend talking about the minutiae of running a shop in a little town and the ins and outs of sourcing good produce. 

There was so much of him she couldn't relate to, probably didn't even want to know about. And it was still part of him. All his memories, everything he'd done, everything he was capable of. 

But he wasn't sure how much of that he wanted to leave behind, how much of it he _could_ leave behind. Maybe he could find a happy medium. Maybe he could find someone a little more steely, a little more interesting, who could still fit into the simple country life Eliot was considering. 

* * *

Next job was a vineyard. Lot like a farm, same migrant workers harvesting the fruit anyway. 

Same basic shitty conditions, at least at this one. Farming wasn't always like this, but he knew now, often enough, it was. 

Once Parker was in, and Hardison had sent her off with a long list of "errands," she came down to the fields to help out. 

She had on the same sort of denim shirt that Tabatha had been wearing when she'd first caught his eye, and at some point she'd stolen someone's cowboy hat, and Eliot spared a brief moment to wonder if she was doing it on purpose. 

He applied himself to the work, so Parker settled in next to him, and eventually shed the denim for the thin tee shirt underneath which she was just beginning to sweat through. 

Okay, that was definitely worse. 

Well, then the bustle around them started to change, the way it did when the boss was stalkin' around. They started walking and looking around for evidence again. 

Parker's eyes lingered on him the same way his lingered on her, he thought, and at one point she pointed out a dusty spot on his shirt just so she could bat at it, and he realized how long it had been since they'd touched, even like this, even on the job, on the grift. 

He brushed that aside. They had work to do, and he'd spotted the boss. "Madigan's right-hand guy," he pointed out to Parker. 

"He's got a very punchable face," Parker observed. 

"Yeah, I noticed that," Eliot responded, and fell a little bit even more in love. 

* * *

It was Parker's sharp eyes that spotted the labels on the vats of mystery chemical, and her steady fingers that lifted out the sample. 

That was her cue to go back up to the winery, to where Hardison was hard at work faking being a vintner while he helped Sophie and Nate with their end of the con. 

Hardison ended up multitasking, and whining about it over comms, but it was more than true, he was doing four things at once, chemistry and forgery and some kinda internet grifting campaign while talking Parker through a hack. 

He talked about it like it was simple, and simple it might have been, but Eliot had no idea what hardly any of his words meant, and he wasn't sure when Parker had learned enough that Hardison thought she should. 

It wasn't simple. No part of Hardison's areas of expertise ever was. He had to go and help Parker. But they did find out what they needed. 

They found out who'd gotten to the records. Betty Carter, the cautious and easily-spooked woman working the fields with him. She'd found out what was happening, and done what she could to blow the whistle. 

She'd already left for the day, but Eliot knew that as soon as she came back in the morning, she'd be in danger. The crew were stirring up more than enough trouble and suspicion for that. 

* * *

They all arrived bright and early, because that was when the auditor's appointment was. They were all covering that. Eliot's job was Betty. 

He wished he could have kept a better eye on her, but they were crackin' down, today. Keeping everyone busy. He tracked her down when he could. 

"I like that camera. Could shove a cat in that camera," Eliot heard over comms, and he smiled, because he knew enough about Parker's theories about souls to know that she was thinking of her own cat-soul and how big a camera it would take to smuggle it. 

Her weirdness was getting so familiar, he thought fondly. 

But now she was changing. Now she was hacking, snarking to Hardison about superheroes and video games and chemistry. 

All Eliot could think of was that the girl had been spending way too much time with Hardison. 

Well, but he was pretty much the only one she had to hang with, right now. It made sense. 

Eliot stopped smiling altogether when he found the place where the mark's thugs had caught up to Betty. He sank down, peering at the tracks. 

"Three guys... she put up a struggle..." 

She was in danger, there was real danger everywhere and Eliot felt sick with the knowledge, felt it twist his face into painful shapes. 

"They've taken her, Nate." 

* * *

He heard Hardison and Nate talking over comms about how the CO2 levels in the winery had been sabotaged, and how it would be the perfect way to kill off Betty and make it look like an accident, make it look like she'd done it to herself. 

Eliot rushed in, of course, and when he caught up to his prey, he took down the first guy, but not as easily as he would have liked. 

He was beginning to feel the edge of it even as he confronted the punchable guy in front of him, already going a bit fuzzy. The guy put on a mask to help him with the air. 

Eliot held on to the voices of Parker and Hardison over the comms as they rushed to get his air back. "Eliot, hold on, we're coming. Eliot. Eliot!" 

As he fought, some things might have been losing their clarity, but other things had never been more clear. 

Life in the countryside was never gonna be how Eliot remembered it. 

He remembered it from a kid's perspective, a naive, mostly happy kid who didn't know jack shit about life and its problems. He always imagined it peaceful, uneventful, idyllic. But that was a time he couldn't go back to, a place left behind when he'd gone off to see the larger world. 

Because once you see the problems with the world, you can't unsee them. You see them everywhere they are. You can't ignore them, not without deliberately closing your eyes. Not without turning away on purpose. 

He couldn't turn away. That wasn't who he was. It never had been, and it never would be. He'd always wanted to know, to find out what he could do, where he was needed. He couldn't not save people, not anymore. 

This was the thing: 

He could go out to the country, buy a little farmland, run a little restaurant. Start a family and happily spend his time on just those responsibilities. But he'd still always be keepin' an eye out for whatever was going wrong, whatever problems the people around him had. 

Because that was one of the best things he remembered about his hometown - people looked out for each other. They didn't ignore trouble just because that trouble was happening to someone else. 

And Eliot would find trouble. There was no place in the world without any. He knew that now. 

He'd need to do things like this, get involved, use all the skills at his disposal, and if he wasn't with the team, he wouldn't have backup. 

He'd done okay on his own as a retrieval specialist, but things like this, they were different. Complex jobs with so many factors in the balance, so many ways of goin' wrong. 

He ran into something like this again, without Hardison, Parker and the rest of the team backing him up, he'd die. 

And then where would his family be? 

There was no going back to that picture-perfect life, no going back to the boy he used to be before he'd first shot to kill in service to the U. S. Army. 

And for the first time in a long, long time, he wouldn't have gone back to being that boy, even if he could. For the first time in his life, he didn't want to. 

He needed all this knowledge, all this experience. He needed to be able to fight. 

His guy taunted him. Maybe tryin' to make him flee for his life. 

"Your head's pounding, your vision's starting to go... that's your brain, running out of oxygen." 

Eliot would give everything he had to take down the bad guys, and trust his team to keep him alive and breathing. So he fought. He took out the one threat. 

Parker and Hardison took out the others. Hardison takin' down the other goons, just like Eliot had taught him, and Parker workin' her magic on the tower's window locks. 

There was air again. 

He'd be okay, and so would Betty. 

Eliot went over to her. "Hey. Hey. You all right?" He cradled her face, watching her eyes, checking her awareness. Then he hefted her into his arms. 

Betty Carter, she was beautiful and earthy, but also sneaky and a fighter, and everything he'd thought he wanted wrapped up in a damsel-in-distress package, but right now all he wanted was his hacker and his thief. 

Parker and her ridiculous crisp red gingham shirt that was obviously brand new, probably shoplifted right off a mannequin. Her uncanny half-real personalities. Her lopsided smiles. Her grace. 

And Hardison. His warmth. His genius. His determination. How far he'd go out of his way for the people he loved, and often, the people he didn't know anything about except that they needed it. 

How they always protected him just as much as he protected them. 

"That's it, everybody out, we're done," he told the others. That had been way too close of a call. 

And he just wanted to go home. 

Nate, surprise surprise, had a backup plan, but he told them he could finish the con himself, with the identity Hardison had built him, and a little help from law enforcement. 

Once Betty was home and safe resting, their jobs were done. Eliot sat heavily on the floor of Lucille. 

"Where to?" Hardison asked him, looking back from the driver's seat. 

Eliot looked up at him, at them both. Yeah, it was time. 

"I just wanna come home," he said. 

Alec let out a breath. "Yeah?" he asked. 

"Yeah," Eliot answered. "C'm'ere." 

They slid in on either side of him, warming him right up. 

"Good. Eliot. Come on home," Hardison said. 

Parker curled up tight against his side. "We missed you. A lot." 

Eliot crushed her head to his chest, mussing up her hair. "Missed you too, Parker. Missed you too." 

* * *

Once they were back in above the brew pub, settled in on the couch, Parker sandwiched in the middle this time as she kept clinging to both of them, she took out her phone. 

"It's time for selfies!" she declared, and held her phone out until all three of them were in the frame. 

"Not gonna do anything to steal us," Hardison told her. "We're already yours, anyway." 

"I know," Parker agreed, making the shutter click. "Never seen a camera big enough to hold either of you." She sighed happily, relaxing into both of their holds. "My bear, and my wolf." 

All of them fighting side by side, when fighting needed doing, and all of them coming home safe, when it was done, coming home to the brew pub, where Eliot cooked, and Hardison brewed, and Parker watched people to figure them out and see who needed help... 

That... that was a picture Eliot could live with. 

If they kept watch, over each other and their customers and the people around them, maybe this could turn into something like their own little town, but connected in to the big world, where they could help watch over that, too. 

He growled, and pulled them both into a tight, tangled hug, which turned into playful wrestling as the three of them tilted off onto the floor, Hardison's limbs flailing and Parker shrieking with delight. 

Actually, what he had here was pretty perfect. 


End file.
